What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
Even as an advertiser (especially as an advertiser), I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change. More than lowering the price of eggs.
Removing these advanced manipulation tools would force everyone—politicians included—to snap back into reality. By outlawing advertising, the machinery of mass delusion would lose its most addictive and toxic fuel.I started out reading this smugly saying to myself yeah, right.
But by the end I’m sold. Let’s ban advertising.
We can start small, maybe with city ordinances. Then roll it out county wide, then at the state level. Once other states see how quiet and sane things can be, they’ll adopt the ban too. The ones that don’t will remain snarling islands of rage & delusion until the people move away.
Let’s ban advertising.
the entire state of vermont already banned roadside billboards years and years ago. change is possible!!
I got curious and read the article.
Nothing in it “sold” me, or introduced any new ideas I hadn’t already thought about. The only things I would have needed to be convinced about, would be like, “how in the world could we enforce such a law”
…not on something easily controllable like “billboards” or “public TV ads,” but like: “figure out who sent a mass email, prove it was within our definition of ‘paid or third-party advertising,’ find the person who sent it and make them stop, even though they probably aren’t even in a country we have jurisdiction over’
No suggestions on any of this were proposed anywhere in the article.
However, there was, at the end, a suggestion that further articles might address these things. And an appeal to subscribe so you could see those articles.